In this paper, a parameterized modeling method based on the APDL (ANSYS parametric design language) command flow is adopted to establish a digital model of a certain type of composite shield machine cutterhead. By applying the ultimate thrust and torque to the cutterhead, the stress and deformation distributions are obtained through a finite element analysis, and the positions where experience maximum stress and displacement are identified. In doing so, the strength and stiffness conditions are validated as well. In addition, a parameterized modeling based optimization method for cutterheads is established by incorporating with the overall mass of the cutterhead as the optimization objective and the strength and stiffness of as constraints, and the corresponding optimization process is proposed. The optimization parameters of the cutterhead are determined through parameter sensitivity analysis, and the influence of relevant parameters on the strength and stiffness of the cutterhead is explored. The key parameters of the composite shield machine cutterhead studied in this article are optimized. After optimization, the maximum stress of the cutterhead, the maximum deformation and the total weight are reduced by 12%, 20%, and 119 kg, respectively. As a result, the proposed optimization method based on parameterized modeling can improve the strength and stiffness of the cutterhead while reducing the quality of the cutterhead. It is expected that this study can shed light on the optimization of multi-objective cutterhead structure.